From the Wall Street Journal. Select quotes, rearranged for maximum irony:
The average 401(k) balance was $131,700 at the end of 2024.
“What’s more important to me than having a few extra dollars in my retirement is that this country is set up for success,” Paris said.
The couple have lost $70,000 in retirement savings since January.
“He’s doing some hard work, some things that are very difficult for people to understand and difficult for people to accept,” Williams said, “but it’ll be to our long-term benefit.”
Meanwhile, the share of Americans who haven’t retired and are confident in their retirement prospects fell to 67% from 74% the prior year.
She said she takes solace in the fact that Trump is surrounded by a cabinet full of handpicked experts whose advice she thinks could help avoid further losses.
I’m certainly no trumper. Very liberal. I will just point out the things that I think about when seeing the headlines.
When Trump got elected, the stock shot up a lot. Where it is at now is a little less than what it was.
If it keeps dropping, or if we hit a recession, that is meaningful. Until then, it honestly doesn’t mean much. I have no doubt that the stock market will increase just as much under Trump as it did under Biden.
As for the 401k, those of us that are employed and not living off the proceeds, a drop is good as we will be able to buy more shares each pay period. By the time we retire, it will be significantly higher than it is now.
Does this mean Trump is good? No, but 401k balances of non retired people is a meaningless statistic.
If a recession comes, this would change things as employment will be lost and retired people will be affected more deeply. My heart will go out to the retired boomers who cause this in that case.
Edit: I’m glad to see the toxic redditors have made their way to Lemmy. Feels like home. Downvote anything that is not blind rage towards Trump.
Yup. Just going by the indexes, the stock market is down all the way to last summer. It’s been a precipitous and steady drop, but if you’re a true believer, it would be easy to say it’s just giving up a little bit of Trump bubble, hope it’s almost over, and relax. After all, they’ve still got their job or most of the stock market gains collected over the last 20 years, so their immediate personal conditions look great.
Apparently, one of the things that becomes really difficult as IQ drops even a little bit below 100 is hypothetical-conditionals. Like, “How would you feel if you hadn’t eaten breakfast?” becomes, “But I did eat breakfast, and I feel fine.” So, looking at the economic disruption Trump’s causing, imagining that it could continue or get worse, and what that might mean for their personal situation can be a real, does-not-compute struggle.
If the disrupt does continue, it will be bad. I feel like this is just a rerun of 2017 so far, though. He made some “deals” that returned everything to the exact place it was before he started and claimed victory, then the stock market kept on as it was.
Why would you think stocks will go back up? The tariffs have proven that we are an unreliable trading partner, and countries are starting to look elsewhere. In addition, the outrage from abandoning our allies has caused a large part of the world to boycott our companies. I don’t see how things could possibly go back to what they were.
The stock market has never not recovered. Even the 2008 recession is just a blip when looking at the max timeline.
Unless you’re implying the end of the stock market, then yes, the stock market will of course go back up.
I’m not saying that the stock market will end. I’m saying that we will never be in as good of a position ever again. The post ww2 world order is being rewriten right now. We were at the top because we were more or less trustworthy and had significant influence throughout the world. We didn’t have much competition. Now that no one trusts us and our influence is being dismantled our trading partners will seek out our competitors or start their own industry creating even more competition. I hope I’m wrong, but i just don’t see how we will ever be trusted again.
This might be true, but it is speculation. Trump could easily reverse course and other countries might just go back to status quo cause it’s easier.
I very much feel like there’s too many possibilities to speculate at this point.